Bullet holes are seen Friday in the glass near the ticketing entrance to Casco Bay Lines' Portland terminal, where a man was fatally shot by Portland police on Thursday night. (Dylan Tusinski/Staff Writer)

PORTLAND — Police shot and killed a man at the Casco Bay Lines terminal Thursday after a chaotic series of emergency calls and a late-night pursuit through the city.

The man was identified by the Portland Police Department as 37-year-old Jacob Hastings. What started as an allegation that Hastings was threatening staff at a seafood wholesaler escalated throughout the night, as police responded to reports of stolen vehicles and car crashes.

Police eventually initiated a pursuit that ended at the ferry station, where about a dozen people were in the lobby and terminal area, Casco Bay Lines General Manager Ben Dinsmore said Friday.

Officers fired at Hastings, who police said “presented his hands as though he had a firearm.” Left behind were traces of multiple gunshots, including holes in the metal siding and a shattered window pane.

Hastings was pronounced dead at the scene.

Portland police Officers Anthony George, Jordin Jackson and Greg Ishihara were placed on administrative leave while state investigators determine whether the shooting was justified.

“Fortunately, nobody from Casco Bay Lines or passengers or any bystanders were hurt,” Dinsmore said. “But certainly, it’s a traumatic and emotional experience to go through.”

CHAOS BEFORE THE SHOOTING

Nova Seafood operations manager George Branco said Hastings arrived at the company Thursday night while workers were loading and unloading food. He indicated he was armed and demanded staff give him a pickup truck, Branco said.

“Nobody was hurt,” Branco said Friday. “Thank God none of our team or nobody in the community got hurt.”

Hastings stole the truck, which belonged to the company, and left the scene, according to police.

Officers then “received several more reports of crashes and vehicles stolen at gunpoint,” according to a news release from the police department. It’s unclear whether Hastings was involved those incidents, and a spokesperson for the police department declined to answer further questions.

After 10:30 p.m., a car crashed through the fence of a parking lot on Sewall Street near Thompson’s Point. People who witnessed the crash described hearing screeching tires and seeing wreckage after the vehicle slammed into a nearby light pole and drove into the fence.

A man who spoke to a reporter Friday near the Portland Transportation Center said he was sitting at the station Thursday night when he saw a man threaten a security guard with a silver revolver before stealing her car. The man declined to share his name because he was also speaking to investigators.

Ben Blunt, the president of Concord Coach Lines, confirmed that a car was stolen around 10:45 p.m. in the lot near the bus station. The woman, who works as a contracted security guard, was sitting in her vehicle when she was approached by a man “in a threatening manner.” Blunt didn’t know specifically how she was threatened.

A man walks Friday past an area where a car reportedly crashed through the fence off Sewall Street near the Portland Transportation Center the night before. The crash Thursday night happened around the time police received reports of other crashes and stolen vehicles throughout the city. (Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer)

He said that for a few minutes after the incident, arriving passengers were asked to stay on the bus and people waiting nearby were asked to shelter inside the transportation center.

Lewiston resident James Dionne, who was in the area at the time, said the vehicle drove through the fence and onto Sewall Street, trailed by several police cruisers.

Police pursued the vehicle along Congress Street to Franklin Avenue, ending at the Casco Bay Lines parking lot, where police say Hastings got out of the vehicle and “failed to follow commands” from officers in the outdoor ferry terminal.

Hastings then reached into his waistband, “presented his hands as though he had a firearm in the direction of officers” and was fatally shot, according to the police department.

Dinsmore, the ferry line’s general manager, said the shooting happened outside of Gate 1. At the time, people had been moved to a secure location inside the terminal, and arriving ferries were delayed until about 11:30 p.m. to avoid the scene.

“Our staff here spoke to the captains on the boats and told them to delay coming in so that they wouldn’t be involved with all the activity that was going on here,” Dinsmore said. “They were safer out there. And then once we got the all-clear from the authorities, the boats came in, and everybody evacuated.”

Investigators were in the terminal area until about 5 a.m. Friday, Dinsmore said, but the ferry system is back to normal operations.

Bullet holes are seen on Friday in the metal siding along the wall of the Casco Bay Lines offices opposite the gates. (Dylan Tusinski/Staff Writer)

Officers later recovered a gun in one of the stolen vehicles, according to the police department’s news release.

Before the chaos unfolded, police said in the same news release that they responded around 9:30 p.m. to a report of shots fired at Spring and Oak streets, near the Holiday Inn By The Bay, but were unable to find a suspect. It’s unclear if Hastings was connected to that report.

A spokesperson for the Portland Police Department declined to provide more details about the shooting and directed a reporter to the Office of the Maine Attorney General. A spokesperson for that agency declined to answer further questions.

According to Portland Police Department policy, officers are only allowed to start a vehicular pursuit if there is probable cause to believe that the driver has committed, is in the process of committing or has threatened to commit a violent felony. They may also start a pursuit if there is an ongoing threat to an innocent passenger in the vehicle “that outweighs the risk of a pursuit.”

HASTINGS’ BACKGROUND

Hastings had a lengthy criminal history dating to 2006, according to a background check through the Maine State Bureau of Identification. He had been in and out of prison several times after being convicted of robbery, theft, aggravated assault, criminal mischief and other crimes.

In 2017, Hastings was convicted of having unlawful sexual contact with three children under the age of 12 in 2014.

Most recently, Hastings was indicted in Cumberland County on a charge of criminal mischief, according to a listing from the district attorney’s office.

He was also known to police as an alleged violent offender and member of the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist group, according to 2016 reports from Old Orchard Beach police. Those reports stated that the Maine Information and Analysis Center had sent an intelligence bulletin to officers, warning that Hastings previously threatened “to kill as many police officers as he can.”

The three Portland police officers involved in Thursday night’s shooting were placed on administrative leave during an investigation by the attorney general’s office, which reviews all police shootings in the state and hasn’t found one to be unjustified since at least 1990.

Jackson was involved in a fatal police shooting in December 2023. He and another officer were shot at after pulling over a suspect on Interstate 295 in South Portland. The man, 42-year-old Kyle Desmarais, got out of his car and fired several gunshots at the officers, who returned fire.

The attorney general’s office ruled that the shooting was justified because officers were acting in self-defense.